For our Muckraking Project, we learned more about the affordability of preschools in the Bay Area. We emailed about 15 different preschools and got responses from 10 of them. It's obvious that private preschools are incredibly overpriced, especially when considering that annual tuition for some private high schools in the area is lower. It's ridiculous to think about, but it really is an issue that is impacting local families. Head Start programs and city preschools (i.e. Mountain View) are great solutions but should be implemented on a larger scale so that all families who can't afford private preschool are able to enroll their kids in pre-K classes. Chiara also suggested the solution of having public school districts provide preschool classes as well, like the City of Mountain View. This would be a good solution because they would be adding a preschool program to a preexisting school district, instead of creating a whole new system to solve the problem. The downside to this solution is that taxes and bills would have to be passed in order to create the funds for a preschool expansion in a school district.
I thought your guys' presentation was really good and very informative. There were lots of surprising things that you guys mentioned that I never knew about. For example, when Chiara mentioned that in some high-paying preschools lots of children are not provided with a lunch or a snack, I was extremely shocked. I went to YMCA which was a preschool located in Mountain View, California and I remember that we would have breakfast as soon as we got there and we would get snacks in between activities and right after nap time. I certainly could not have imagined not getting fed for several hours especially as a little kid. Overall, you guys did an excellent job on your website.
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